Nothing fires up old Heat emotions like Pierce, Garnett

The question of the series is if Pierce, Garnett have any magic left?

(Elsa/Getty Images )

May 5, 2014|Dave Hyde, Sun Sentinel Columnist

MIAMI — There was a point Monday, as Heat guard Dwyane Wade discussed this coming series against Brooklyn's Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, that he said, "We thought when we played them in Boston, we buried them."

He followed that with, "They just won't go away."

More than anyone, this series, this drama, is about them for the Heat. Pierce and Garnett aren't in their prime anymore. They still make this an open rivalry, even a blood basketball war starting Tuesday in Game 1.

"That's how it's always been," Wade said. "Some of it's them being good, us being good, us not liking them for being good and them not liking us for being good.

"When we first started this thing, they were the big brothers — the big bullies, really — on the block. It took us a while to impose our will. But I think we have now."

This second act for Garnett and Pierce in Brooklyn should be an epilogue this series. Their career obits should get written, if the Heat are the team they think they are, the one a lot of us still do if the topic is the Eastern Conference.

This series isn't for the championship of the East, the way it felt for a while between those Boston and Miami teams. The Nets aren't even the worst feud bubbling in the East for the Heat right now.

"There's more bad blood waiting out there for us," Wade said, referencing Indiana.

But there's something with Pierce and Garnett that makes one wonder if there's anything special left in their tank. Joe Johnson and Deron Williams are the engines of the Nets. They haven't been champions, though.

So the real question of this series is whether Pierce and Garnett have one final stab of magic left in their careers. They'll have moments. They did against Toronto, each of them in the series-winning final seconds.

But Pierce is 36. Garnett turns 38 this month and plays only 20 minutes a game. Sometimes champions like them can turn back the clock for a night, maybe two. But enough to tilt a seven-game series against the Heat?

You can go chapter and verse of how this rivalry started: of Pierce delivering a game-winning shot in the final Heat game before the Big Three; of Pierce being ejected from a Heat playoff game; of Wade throwing a retaliatory elbow at Garnett in a regular-season game.

But the storyline goes deeper. LeBron James played his final game in Cleveland against Pierce and Garnett in Boston, and references another playoff game as a Cavalier where both he and Pierce scored more than 40 points.

"They won, so he was one shot better, I guess," LeBron said.

Ray Allen won a title with Garnett and Pierce in Boston in 2008. But when he went down the Celtics bench before his first game with the Heat against them last season, Garnett famously refused to shake hands or even look at him.

"No," Allen says when asked if he's talked with Garnett over the last two years.

Has he tried?

"No, no," he says.

Allen seems to think how this sounds, because he is a basketball gentleman in the way Garnett is only a basketball warrior. "When I came here, everyone welcomed me immediately as part of the team, as one of their brothers," he said. "That's been my only focus since."

Pierce, for his part, knows this Heat team isn't the one his old Boston teams faced a few years ago. He's watched them grow. He understands this challenge of matching up against LeBron.

"They're two championships in now," he said. "A lot of confidence. They know they can win. They've been in every situation. They've grown. That's the difference. Two, three years ago, they weren't champions."

Brooklyn doesn't come in scared like Charlotte was, though.

"As far as saying that we match up well, we feel like we're ready for whoever," Pierce said.

There is more to this than Pierce and Garnett, of course. But this drama runs through them for the Heat. They need four games of recaptured magic to beat the champs. Even this late in their careers, underestimate them at your own risk.